Archive for August, 2006

Dream Theater - Score

Dream Theater’s 5th live release, a 3 CD or 2 DVD set titled Score, captures the last show of their 20th anniversary tour which was performed at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The show was constructed as a musical journey through the bands history beginning in the present and then flashing back to the days of Majesty in 1985, moving all the way back up to 2006 again, hitting every studio album along the way.

This release is notable for a few reasons. The first is the inclusion of Another Won, the very first song written together by John Myung, John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy back when they were at the Berklee College of Music in 1985. Another notable track is Raise the Knife, one of the unreleased songs from the Falling into Infinity era which was rarely played.

However, the biggest reason this show was special was the second set, where the band was acompanied by a live, 30 person orchestra through the entire second set and the encore. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence was played in it’s 42 minute entirety with the orchestral parts normally played on the keyboard being handled by the live orchestra.

There was so much atmosphere inside the RCMH during this show, you could almost see it in the air. The crowd was totally into the show, clapping, singing, fist pumping, lighter swaying, etc. During some songs (The Spirit Carries On, for example), there’s a lot of shots of the crowd that are very cool to watch

The Video

The video of this show continues the impressive tradition started with Live at Budokan (in fact, it was even done by the same production company). The footage has a different feel to it, due to the different camera crews and overall I feel it’s slightly behind LaB in “artistic” department, however, there’s coverage for every band member at all times, and the editing switches to show the proper band members at the correct times. There’s only a couple times I wished they would have shown more of the guitar during some solos, such as Under a Glass Moon, but overall the camera work and editing were really well done

The Audio

The 5.1 mix on the DVD is…incredible. The crowd noise all around you, the band and orchestra being perfectly audiable despite a lot of notes coming at you…it really makes you feel like you’re there. There’s a couple little spots that drew me out of the show, like during Solitary Shell, James’ vocals sound like they were equalized poorly, but it’s a minor thing really. John Myung is up in the mix so you can actually hear him, as has been the trend on recent releases which is a welcome change. At times the guitar sounds a smidge too loud and drowns out a lot of the keyboard action, but it feels like a lot more of a balanced mix than Live at Budokan was where the guitar was stuck over on the right hand side most of the show.

As far as the performance of the band, they looked like they were having a very “on” night, and from the reports of the people that were at the concert, it sounds like there was very limited need to do any overdubs to fix mistakes. James…James is going to get his own section header because he deserves it.

James LaBrie

Holy mother of god! James was ON. I saw DT 3 days before they played this show and he was pretty good then, but he took it to the next level here. Historically his vocal performance live has been hit or miss, espically with a lot of the higher notes due to a vocal chord rupture during the Awake Tour. I’m not sure you’re going to be able to find anybody who says that this was not the absolute best live performance of James LaBrie that has ever been recorded.

From Under a Glass Moon to Innocence Faded, he nailed pretty much every tough passage there was. I’m pretty sure they included Innocence Faded in the setlist just to showcase James’ voice, espically in the “Wearing apathetic displays / Sharing flesh like envy in cages / Condescending / Not intending to end” section. There’s no way he was ever going to pull something like that off a couple years ago.

Welcome back James!

The Orchestra

The orchestra started off the second set with a somewhat weak rendition of the Overture of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. Not really to bash their performance or anything, but you really need more than a 30 person orchestra to pull that off and make it sound as epic as it does on the album. However, once the rest of the band kicked in it got a ton better. Unlike Metallica’s S&M where the orchestra was bolted on to existing songs, Dream Theater is a more natural fit considering a lot of the keyboard parts are strings anyway.

The orchestration sounded pretty good, with some added flair that one is probably going to miss on the studio recordings when you hear them after hearing this. They played the entire second set including Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, a completly orchestral version of Vacant, The Answer Lies Within, Sacraficed Sons and Octavarium. They returned for the encore, which was Metropolis Pt. 1 and probably one of the greatest moments in Dream Theater history. The DVD is worth getting for the encore alone.

Oh, and at the end of the show, one of the guys in the orchestra threw up the horns \m/

The Bonus Material

The hour long documentary on the second disc is very well done, and runs you through the history of the band, starting at Berklee (the band even returns to the school and points out some signifigant areas to the band’s history) and ending at Radio City Music Hall. Included are interviews with current and past members of the band with the exception of Kevin Moore, the original keyboardist.

The animation played during octavarium on the main DVD is viewable in it’s entirety on the second disc as well, which is very cool. I remember watching it live and thinking it was awesome since it syncs up with what the band is playing.

There’s also a couple of additional live songs, Honor Thy Father, The Great Debate and Another Day from various periods of the bands history.

Conclusion

Eeep, I guess this ran a bit long. Overall I was really impressed by the DVD. The production, setlist, playing and the extras all make it a worthwhile purchase for anyone, and it’s probably a very good starting point for those interested in learning what Dream Theater is all about since it has a very wide selection of their music from every time period. The orchestra is weak in spots, but generally spot on (and even more impressive when you realize they only had 1 rehersal with the orchestra present the day before the show)

Two thumbs up from me, although if you knew me you probably could have guessed that was going to happen anyway.

Ok, I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about Score, so I probably won’t mention it for a while after this